CALIFORNIA STATE CAPITOL MUSEUM

One Saturday morning, we woke up with with sun, and headed out to the Tower Cafe for breakfast (the cornmeal blueberry pancake was amazing!) and then to tour the CA State Capitol. We live about 15 minutes from Downtown, so we are fairly close to the capitol and all of the other state and government buildings in the area. We admired the beautifully restored dome to it's 1907 Art Deco' area and the mint condition hallways reconstructed in the 1940's. We learned about past CA Governors in the portrait hallway, went to "lobby row", and the assembly hall. We had two older couples in our tour group, one from Iowa & another from England. They were so sweet and asked such great questions during the tour! The couple from Iowa (a retired school teacher & librarian) had visited 40 state capitols while driving and touring cross country in their RV. It was a really fun morning and we enjoyed exploring the building on our own afterwards. There are SO many exhibits, we will definitely be back!

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

I have fond memories of homemade ice cream as a child. It always involved pulling out our old ice cream maker from the fridge, setting it up on the back patio, and making sure the extremely salty rock salt pieces stayed on top of the mixture while it churned. That creamy and cold treat is the epitome of summer in my eyes. Since we don't have an ice cream maker, I settled with this no churn recipe I found online, and jazzed it up with some fresh strawberries and a hint of sea salt, to keep with my childhood memories. Served on a cone & topped with sprinkles, this was the perfect way to cool down after an extremely hot weekend here in Sacramento.